GREAT RUSSELL STREET, January 9, 1831. 
     DEAR H——­,

I promised you a letter to-day, and if I can do so now, at least I will begin to keep my promise, though I think it possible my courage may fail me after the first side of my sheet of paper.  We arrived in town from Brighton on this afternoon at four o’clock, and though it is not yet ten I am so weary, and have so much to do to-morrow (rehearsing “Fazio” and acting Juliet), that I think I shall not sit up much longer to-night, even to write to you.

We found my mother tolerably well, and Henry, who had been out skating all day, in great beauty and high spirits.  I must now tell you what I had not room for when I wrote you those few lines in A——­’s letter.

Mr. Barton, a friend of John’s who traveled with him in Germany, and whose sister has lately married John Sterling (of whom you have often heard us speak), called here the other day, and during the course of a long visit told us a great deal of the very beginning of this Spanish expedition, and of the share Mr. Sterling and Richard Trench [the present venerable archbishop of Dublin] had in its launching.

It seems (though he would not say whence they derived them) that they were plentifully supplied with funds, with which they purchased and manned a vessel destined to carry arms and ammunition to Spain for the purposes of the revolutionists.  This ship they put under command of an experienced smuggler, and it was actually leaving the mouth of the Thames with Sterling and Mr. Trench on board it, bound for Spain, when by order of Lord Aberdeen it was stopped.  Our two young gentlemen jumped into a boat and made their escape, but Mr. Sterling, hearing that government threatened to proceed against the captain of the captured vessel, came forward and owned it as his property, and exonerated the man, as far as he could, from any share of the blame attaching to an undertaking in which he was an irresponsible instrument.  Matters were in this state, with a prosecution pending over John Sterling, when the ministry was changed, and nothing further has been done or said by government on the subject since.

My brother had gone off to Gibraltar previously to all this, to take measures for facilitating their landing; he is now quietly and I hope comfortably wintering there.  Torrijos, it seems, is not at all disheartened, but is waiting for the propitious moment, which, however, from the appearance of things, I should not consider likely to be at hand just yet.  Mr. Sterling has, I understand, been so seriously ill since his marriage that at one time his life was despaired of, and even now that he is a little recovered he is ordered to Madeira as soon as he can be moved.  This is very sad for his poor bride.

Of our home circle I have nothing to tell you.  My father, Dall, and I had a very